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Outlook app for Apple and Android devices

We ignored all the hype and spin to spend some time ourselves with the new Outlook app on various devices.  Here’s what we’ve found so far …

Microsoft has released its own Outlook app, it’s hyped as a combined email, calendar and contacts app.

You might like to get the Outlook app and try a different way to view and manage your emails.  We like the idea of experimenting with new ways to view personal info.  It might take some getting used to since it’s a quite different approach from Outlook software or Outlook in a web browser.

That said, we found the whole thing quite clumsy and amazingly limited in some key areas.  Most users will need to fall back on the in-built email, calendar and, especially contacts, to get what they need.

Requirements

Apple devices

iOS 8 is required otherwise Microsoft says   “Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus.Link

Android devices

Requires “Android 4.0 and up” – in name terms that means ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ or later.  link

Unlike the Office for Android apps, also released today, there are no screen size limitations from small phones to large tablets.

Get the basics right

This is preview software so some tolerance for problems is reasonable. On the other hand, this app has been released to the public and is based on previously available software (called Accompli) so you’d expect it to handle the fundamentals right.

In our tests, the Outlook app for Android needs work with the basics of Exchange Server synchronization.   No matter what we tried, what swipes or taps we did or time we waited, our Outlook for Android tests would not synchronize reliably with the Exchange Server 2013.

The whole idea of ‘push’ email is that newly arrived messages will appear on devices or software quickly, within seconds.  For us, Outlook for Android would rarely budge from its initial synchronization but there was no error message to suggest there was a communication problem.

On multiple devices we found the strange situation where the devices in-built mail client showed a more current version of the same Inbox than Microsoft’s new Outlook app!

We’d be interested to hear from Office Watch readerss who, we hope, have had more luck with the preview Outlook apps.

Around the Inbox

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The top left bars take you to the folder which also gives access to the Calendar, People and Files views.

Magnifying glass is for searches.  Start typing a search and nice autocomplete suggestions appear based on your email and people content.  Searches appear to be limited to items saved on the device, not a wider search of server content.

Envelope Plus will start a message compose.

The horizontal dots open a, somewhat, context aware menu that changes depending on what you’re viewing or selected.  The menu button on Android devices opens the same menu.

Quick Filters will arrange the folder to show Unread or Flagged messages. The third option ‘Files’ we expected to show only emails with attachments.  However the Outlook app also includes messages with images embedded in the message body which aren’t considered attachments by any other Outlook incarnation (or any other email client we can think of).

Finally the two ‘tabs’ on the Inbox … Focused and Other …

Focused Inbox

The Outlook app has several new concepts for email management, the main one is the ‘Focused Inbox’ that’s on by default.

Outlook ‘intelligently presorts your email so you can focus on what matters‘ according to the hype.  In the past these efforts have been a miserable failure (we saw a beta Outlook with a similar feature over 15 years ago, it never appeared in public).

This ‘intelligence’ looks at messages to sort messages into two tabs – Focused Inbox and Other.  Over time it learns from your email interactions, tries to split bulk email from personally directed messages etc.

There’s no list of focused inbox rules, all you can do is train it by moving messages between the two groups.  ‘Move to Focused Inbox’ or Move to Non-Focused Inbox’ only appear on the message menu after opening the message.  You can’t do it from the main email list.

These two ‘folders’ don’t show up in other views of the same Exchange Server Inbox, they are an ‘Outlook app only’ split view of a single Inbox.

Swiping

Left and Right swipes on messages in the list give you archive/delete and scheduling options.

A short swipe to the left will archive the message to a folder you select at first use.  A longer left swipe will delete the message.  It takes a little practice but you’ll see that a swipe changes from archive to delete as your finger moves left.

A right swipe brings up ‘Scheduling’ which really means moving the message to a ‘Defer’ folder that you select on first use. These scheduled message are placed in a separate folder.

That folder is then copied to your online mail storage and, from there to other connected software or devices.  This schedule or defer option has no link to the existing ‘Follow Up’ alerts in Outlook.

Messages can be flagged, though it’s a three step process (select message from list, open menu, select  Mark Flagged or Remove Flag (both appear regardless of the current Flag status).

The swiping options make some big assumptions about how user manage their Inbox.  Some choices would make the easy gestures more adaptable to how people work – for example an swipe option to Flag or Mark Unread instead of the defaults.

Calendar

The calendar is better than email.  There are two views available.  Day view is a standard list of a day with empty space where you have nothing booked.

Agenda view is more appropriate for small devices because it shows only the appointments for a day with no empty space.  Outlook for Windows did have a similar view many versions ago but it was removed in one of Microsoft’s strange design decisions.

Unfortunately, appointments flagged as ‘Private’ can’t be removed from this view as you can in Outlook for medicine reminders.

The times in the above image might seem strange (dinner at 4am?).  That’s because the appointments are for another time zone.  Switching the device time zone isn’t detected by Outlook unless you manually close and restart the app.

A prize to the Microsoft development team who push through some decent time zone features, not the lame ‘tick box’ junk Outlook users have suffered for years </gripe>.

People

The People list isn’t like Outlook Contacts at all and is so limited as to be almost worthless.  You’re shown a list of Contacts and email addresses only.  Tap on the envelope at left to compose a new message to that person.

Tap on the contact to open a view of related messages, meetings and files.

Nowhere, but nowhere, can you view other contact details!  No phone numbers, address, notes … nada.  Don’t bother looking for an obvious feature like tapping a button to call a contact (by phone or Skype) or getting their address so you can drive there.

This People list is designed for use with the Focused Inbox only.  Over time this list will be culled to only display your active contacts.  Even so, this app is supposed to be a replacement for other contact lists on the device … it doesn’t get to ‘first base’ if users can’t view all their contact details.

The People part of the Outlook app gets a big fat Zero score from us.  It’s hard to understand why Microsoft thought such a large omission was acceptable even in a preview product.

 

We’ll keep using the Outlook app. Maybe it’ll grow on us. It is definitely no replacement for whatever we’re already using to access your Exchange or other data stores.

Have you tried the Outlook app?

Tell us what you think.  What do you like?  What don’t you like?

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